Because knowing myself is harder than I expected.

Metanoia

I’m not sure I’ve ever told the story of how I came to know Jesus, but it feels like a good day for spinning yarns. I was just another agnostic who’d gone to Catholic school and grew up going to a Brethren church with her grandparents. After I became a mother at age 25, I began to feel these questions in my heart swell and crescendo with regard to life, God, and the proverbial meaning of it all.

A precious girl named Laura, then only 18, was the impetus for my search into the validity of the claims of Jesus. I’d shared with her how I lost some friends due to a terrible choice I’d made, and she was the first Christian to say that she’d have stuck by me had she been my friend, no matter what I’d done, because that’s what Jesus would do.

I told her I didn’t believe Jesus was the son of God, and she said, “Really? Because I can’t imagine my life without Him.”

After a lifetime of rejection by parents and friends, this was unbelievable to me. That night, I was talking with another friend about the conversation with Laura. It played over and over in my mind, her certainty that this Jesus, who was to me a brilliant hero of a fictional tale, loved her more than anything in the world.

I think she must’ve heard my head explode when she said, “That’s how I feel, too. I couldn’t imagine my life without Him.” Say what? So now I have these two friends who are sure that Jesus is real, that He is true, and that He is for them. Bizarre. As the conversation went on, I had questions. My friend tried hard to answer them, but in the end, realized she didn’t know enough to satisfy my curiosity.

And this is where I need to sidebar, because I don’t know that I’d ever say, “I just don’t know enough to help you, but let me take you to someone who does.” Thank you, Stef, for confessing that you didn’t know it all. Had you tried to just argue or give me some pat answer, I’d have written you off, and your God too. Instead, you humbled yourself and, in turn, set my feet on the path toward Jesus.

The first time I went to what would become my home group, the first hour of group was an exchange between the Spur and myself; me asking (hurling?) questions, him not mincing words in response. After I had exhausted my arsenal, he went on to that night’s topic. In his lesson, he taught that “Confession is not saying I did it and I was wrong, but God said it and He is right!”

I love how confessing God’s truth helps change my heart. I need to do it more. I’ve lived the same lies for so long, and they prevail in large part because I’ve just heard them so much more and for so much longer than the truth of the Kingdom of Heaven.

I always thought that changing my mind, my heart, my truth, would be a matter of wrestling with myself until one side was the clear victor, but that’s not at all how it’s turning out. Instead, I find that as I have courage to believe that Jesus is Truth, and that in Him there is no shadow or turning, He shows me that He has trampled all lies in the fullness of time.

Isn’t that beautiful? For someone who is performance oriented, it is. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Who knew that just being with Jesus would bring liberty? This slip of truth uncurls in my heart, and I feel my spirit expand.

Metanoia, the breaking down of lies to reveal the truth. It feels like the crazy sort of thing my crazy Jesus would choose to do. But it makes me smile.

One Response

Too often Christians interact people as if they already “know it all” and I think that’s one of the biggest turn-offs for non-believers. It’s so heartwarming to read that someone who did NOT take that attitude had such an impact on your life for good!